Ville Valo & Natalia Avelon - Summer Wine - v1.0

It started out as an experiment. I wanted to do a duet with a fellow vocals student for a song that had what appeared to be a simple instrumental backing. As I analysed it more I did however notice a lot of instrumental complexity with many of them popping up occasionally. The end result is a compromise where I recorded full tracks for all the instruments, excluding the trumpet.

Vocals

Both vocal tracks were recorded as one track. It was an afternoon of multiple takes until we reached a reasonable quality. Then I used automation to adjust the panning and volume of the two voices. No video recordings were made during the session.

Rhythm guitar

A simple open chords progression where I avoided hitting the high notes for the sound to better blend into the background.

Bass

At a walking pace with the drums, keeping the rhythm going but staying out of the way in the background.

Keyboard - strings

Backing and lead strings were recorded separately. There's one and two octaves between their pitches but I used the same virtual instrument.

Keyboard - trumpet

The original has multiple trumpets playing in unison. I found a virtual instrument of good quality and applied a chorus effect.

Drums

Very simple drum pattern tagging along the song. As always, keeping the tempo was my main focus.

Misc

This is one of the very first songs I started out recording years ago, along with Heart of gold and Driving towards the daylight. Initially the takes were audio only and of too bad quality of both the performances and the recordings. It was only in the past few months that I got to re-record their most recent versions.